Heartbeat Patch 2 — there's a new skill in this one

Heartbeat Patch 2 — there's a new skill in this one

Patch 1 was four small fixes. This one got away from me a bit.

⛽ New skill: Skimming (and the Flow)

The Drift's twelfth discipline. Trawl the nebula gas-bands for volatiles — eight tiers of them, Drift Vapor up to Singular Condensate — then route them into the Flow: pick one lane (Process, Bay, or Combat) and your volatiles burn, highest tier first, to run that whole lane faster. +6% at tier 1 up to +20% at tier 8, for as long as you keep the tank lit. It's a gather skill whose entire point is making your late game quicker — an economy, not a stat stick. All nine new items have bespoke art and full wiki pages.

One honest note: Skimming's achievements are built but can't go live yet — the game is at Steam's 100-achievement cap. They'll light up when Valve grants more slots; anything you earn meanwhile counts retroactively the moment they do.

🚀 Auto-Charter (¤60,000 automation upgrade)

Away-team expeditions run themselves: returns get collected the moment they're back (every reward lands exactly as if you'd clicked), and the next mission launches automatically — the highest tier whose odds clear your floor (Safe ≥75% / Bold ≥55% / Any), crewed by your strongest idle hands. It never spends your credits on rerolls; that stays your call.

⚖️ Warfare levels slower now — here are the numbers

Warfare's XP grew ×1.62 per tier while everything else grows ~×1.2, so by tier 8 combat paid about 7× more XP per hour than any other skill — a fitted ship could hit level 100 in ~13 hours. That's a balance bug, not a reward. Per-tier growth is now ×1.28: tier 1 is unchanged, an under-gunned ship earns slightly under gather rates, and a well-fitted one still earns a healthy premium (~1.3–1.7×). Level 100 now takes roughly 66–199 hours depending on your ship. XP you've already banked is untouched.

📐 Account Level, explained and improved

"Acct Lv" now shows on your Overview card (hover it for the full explanation — it's your average skill level, and it gates Shipyard components, Cantina hires, and some encounters). And it's now computed from your best 11 skills — so the new skill joining at level 1 cannot drag your average down or re-lock anything you'd already earned. Nobody's number goes down today.

🔍 Small things you asked about

• Every help page now answers "what is Account Level?"
• The Expeditions and Relics pages now say it plainly: every successful expedition has roughly a 1-in-3 chance to bring home an artifact fragment. There's no special dig mission — keep teams flying.
• Volatile wiki pages list their real job (burning in the Flow), not just their sale price.
• Your overall completion % dips slightly today — that's the twelfth skill joining the math, not lost progress. It's more game.

Patch 1's reports came from you; so did half of this one — the too-fast warfare curve, the confusing Account Level, the expedition automation ask. Keep them coming.

— KptKittyBucket